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Most of the album was actually recorded eight years earlier, in the basement of a house shared by the musicians. As Bob Dylan recovered from a near-fatal motorcycle accident during 1967, he called on The Band to help him experiment with themes of traditional folk music and Americana; these explorations, and their possible links with the earlier Anthology of American Folk Music, are explored in Invisible Republic by author Greil Marcus.
The sessions laid the foundation both for the approach of Dylan's 1967 album John Wesley Harding, and for the Band finding their own voice on 1968's Music From Big Pink. The Dylan LP, a critically-acclaimed departure from the surrealist rock and roll he had recently pioneered on his milestone trio of albums from 1965 and 1966, was as much of a shock to his fans as were those records to his earlier folk audience. Both it and Music From Big Pink would greatly influence the turn, by many contemporary popular musicians, away from the psychedelic music that reached its height in 1967, toward an embrace of country-influenced folk styles.
Material from the sessions had been heavily bootlegged since 1968, with the most famous being 1969's Great White Wonder. It wasn't until Dylan's comeback with Blood on the Tracks in 1975 that any of it was officially released, and The Basement Tapes was welcomed with high praise from fans and critics. Compiled by Robbie Robertson, the album features new songs and many overdubs made by The Band long after the original sessions. More complete and authentic documents of the 1967 tapes have since surfaced and are traded by fans, while the later Band tracks have appeared as bonus tracks on CD reissues of their proper albums.
The Basement Tapes peaked at #7 in 1975 on Billboard's (North America) Pop Albums chart and reached #8 in the UK. In 2003, the album was ranked number 291 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
The Story of the Basement Tapes
In the mid-1960s, Bob Dylan was at the peak of his creativity, having broken into the mainstream with his popular and acclaimed albums Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. In the latter half of 1965, during the interim between those two albums, Dylan began touring with The Hawks (later known as The Band). Their live collaboration would continue into the first half of 1966, culminating in a legendary 'world' tour documented in The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert.
According to Hawks/Band guitarist Robbie Robertson, "When I first met [Dylan] [in 1965], I played him this ballad from The Impressions' Keep On Pushing album, 'I've Been Trying,' written by Curtis Mayfield. I said: 'They're not saying anything much and this is killing me, and you're rambling on for an hour and you're losing me; I mean, I think you're losing the spirit.'" Whether or not Robertson's comments had any real influence on Dylan's decision to change his musical direction, within a couple of years Dylan would be writing quite different styles of songs.
After the crash
On July 29th that year, Dylan suffered a mild concussion and cracked vertebrae when he crashed his Triumph 650 Bonneville motorcycle near Woodstock, New York. He was taken to a local hospital where he phoned the members of the Hawks, informing them of his injuries. Dylan and the Hawks were scheduled to perform at several concerts later in the year, but with Dylan's current condition, those concerts had to be cancelled.
A little more than a week later, Dylan was back in Woodstock, wearing a neck brace and recuperating at a local doctor's house. While he was recovering, Dylan reviewed a preliminary cut of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary of the 1966 'world' tour. "They had made another Dont Look Back, only this time it was for television," recalled Dylan in 1978. "I had nothing better to do than to see the film. All of it, including unused footage. And it was obvious from looking at the film that it was garbage. It was miles and miles of garbage." Dissatisfied with Pennebaker's results, Dylan re-edited the footage into a surrealistic film, titled Eat the Document. (Howard Alk, who shot much of the footage, and Robbie Robertson also accepted Dylan's invitation to help him edit the film.)
As biographer Clinton Heylin writes, "in the latter months of 1966 Dylan was certainly re-evaluating where he had come to at the age of twenty-five, and reviewing the raw film footage [of Eat the Document] was only part of that process."
Dylan later recalled, "The turning point was back in Woodstock. A little after the accident. Sitting around one night under a full moon, I looked out into the bleak woods and I said, 'Something's gotta change.'"
Killing time with The Hawks
According to the late Rick Danko, the Hawks joined Robbie Robertson at their house in West Saugerties in February of 1967. Nicknamed "Big Pink," the house originally belonged to "Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson," according to Robertson. "I think Levon (Helm) eventually moved in there, too. I didn't live there, but the whole idea was that we had been living in New York City, and we ended up moving upstate really to get a clubhouse, a place where we could woodshed. It was a real clubhouse, and we were just like a street gang — only we played music instead of going out fighting. We would get together every day at the clubhouse, just like the Bowery Boys. And as soon as Bob got well from his motorcycle accident, he started coming up every day."
The date is uncertain, but sometime between March and June, Dylan and the Hawks began a series of informal recording sessions. Originally taking place at Dylan's house, "in the equally color-conscious Red Room" (according to Heylin), these informal sessions eventually moved to the basement of Big Pink.
"We used to get together everyday at one o' clock in the basement of Big Pink, and it was just a routine. We would get there and to keep [every] one of us from going crazy, we would play music every day . . . There was no particular reason for it. We weren't making a record. We were just fooling around. The purpose was whatever comes into anybody's mind, we'll put it down on this little tape recorder." That tape recorder was actually an old Uher that was used on their legendary 'world' tour in 1966. Equipped with a couple of Altec PA tube mixers and allowing up to three microphones to be input per channel, with four or five studio-quality Neumann microphones, the machine was operated by the Hawks' Garth Hudson during the recording sessions. Dylan would later say in 1969, "that's really the way to do a recording — in a peaceful, relaxed setting, in somebody's basement, with the windows open and a dog lying on the floor."
For the first couple of months, they were just "killing time," according to Robertson. Apparently, much of the early months was spent on covers. "With the covers Bob was educating us a little," recalls Roberston. "The whole folkie thing was still very questionable to us — it wasn't the train we came in on ... He'd come up with something like '[The Banks of the] Royal Canal,' and you'd say, 'This is so beautiful! The expression!' ... he remembered too much, remembered too many songs too well. He'd come over to Big Pink, or wherever we were, and pull out some old song — and he'd prepped for this. He'd practiced this, and then come out here, to show us." Circulating tapes from these sessions reveal a large, diverse number of popular songs, including compositions written or made popular by Johnny Cash, The Stanley Brothers, Ian Tyson, John Lee Hooker, Hank Williams and Eric Von Schmidt as well as "sea shanties . . . country tearjerkers, from pure gospel to morality tales . . . material from the English and Irish dales, the Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi Delta, Nashville's Music Row, and even Tin Pan Alley," according to Heylin.
New compositions
Dylan was soon writing and recording new compositions at these informal sessions. "We were doing seven, eight, ten, sometimes fifteen songs a day," recalls Hudson. "Some were old ballads and traditional songs . . . but others Bob would make up as he went along ... We'd play the melody, he'd sing a few words he'd written, and then make up some more, or else just mouth sounds or even syllables as he went along. It's a pretty good way to write songs."
Two of the first songs Dylan recorded was "Tiny Montgomery" and "Sign on the Cross"; the former "rediscovered his flair for characters out of left field," wrote Heylin, while the latter "captures the deathless fatalism of gospel and country Dylan was after in much of his later born-again albums," according to NPR's Tim Riley.
In a matter of months, Dylan would record at least thirty new compositions with the Hawks, including some of the most celebrated songs of his career: "I Shall Be Released", "This Wheel's On Fire", "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)", "Million Dollar Bash", "Tears Of Rage", "You Ain't Going Nowhere", "Going To Acapulco", "I'm Not There (1956)", "All You Have To Do Is Dream", "Apple Suckling Tree", etc. At least two songs were co-written with members of the Hawks: "Tears Of Rage" with Richard Manuel and "This Wheel's On Fire" with Rick Danko. "He came down to the basement with a piece of typewritten paper . . . and he just said, 'Have you got any music for this?'," recalled Manuel. "I had a couple of musical movements that fit . . . so I just elaborated a bit, because I wasn't sure what the lyrics meant. I couldn't run upstairs and say, 'What's this mean, Bob: 'Now the heart is filled with gold as if it was a purse'?'"
In May of 1967, Dylan gave his first interview in roughly a year. He told Michael Iachetta that "What I've been doing mostly is seeing only a few close friends, reading a little 'bout the outside world, poring over books by people you never heard of, thinking about where I'm going, and why am I running, and am I mixed up too much, and what am I knowing, and what am I giving and what am I taking . . . Songs are in my head like they always are. And they're not going to get written down until some things are evened up. Not until some people come forth and make up for some of the things that happened."
According to Heylin, that someone expected to atone 'for some of the things that happened' was Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman. Within weeks of the interview, Dylan recorded a Bobby Bare song that dated back to 1959. Titled "All-American Boy", it was originally a thinly veiled critique of Elvis Presley's notorious manager, Colonel Tom Parker, but Dylan rewrote some of the verses, adding some personal references regarding his relationship with Grossman.
Dwarf Music demos
Dylan still owed Columbia one more album. According to Robert Shelton, he owed them fourteen new songs. In fact, Dylan's original intentions for those songs remain unclear, although it should be noted he copyrighted fourteen of the songs, the same number that he owed Columbia. The songs copyrighted are: "Million Dollar Bash", "Yea Heavy and a Bottle of Bread", "Please Mrs. Henry", "Down In the Flood", "Lo and Behold", "Tiny Montgomery", "This Wheel's On Fire", "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "I Shall Be Released", "Tears of Rage", "Too Much of Nothing", "Quinn the Eskimo", "Open the Door, Homer" and "Nothing Was Delivered",
At the end of August, ten of them were dubbed down from their original stereo recordings to mono and copyrighted by Dwarf Music; in January of 1968, Dylan copyrighted another batch of songs including "Tears of Rage", "Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)," "Nothing Was Delivered", and "Open the Door Homer." Jointly formed by Dylan and Grossman, Dwarf Music was established in 1965 in order to copyright demos intended for other artists. In an interview taken in 1978, Dylan admitted that the songs written and recorded at Big Pink "were written vaguely for other people . . . I don't remember anybody specifically those songs were ever written for . . . At that time psychedelic rock was overtaking the universe and we were singing these homespun ballads."
Peter, Paul and Mary were the first to chart with a Big Pink composition when they issued their single of "Too Much of Nothing" in November 1967. Soon after, Manfred Mann topped the charts with "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)." When The Byrds released their groundbreaking, country-rock album Sweetheart of the Rodeo in 1968, they opened and closed it with "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" and "Nothing Was Delivered". In the UK, "This Wheel's on Fire" made the top 5 for Julie Driscoll and the Brian Auger Trinity; the song was also covered by The Byrds for their second album of 1968, Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, while the Hawks — reunited with Levon Helm and rechristened The Band — recorded their own version on their celebrated debut, Music from Big Pink, an album that also featured "I Shall Be Released" and "Tears of Rage." Fairport Convention would also record "Million Dollar Bash" on their celebrated third album, Unhalfbricking.
Eventually, rumors of Dylan and The Band's enormous stash of unreleased recordings began to circulate. Rolling Stone Magazine even ran a cover story in June 1968, claiming that "there is enough material ... to make an entirely new Bob Dylan record, a record with a distinct style of its own ... These tapes could easily be remastered and made into a record. The concept of a cohesive record is already present."
The fourteen songs copyrighted by Dwarf Music brought those particular songs into private circulation, as demo acetates were soon cut for those songs. With no planned release in sight, these demo acetates became the source material for a number of bootlegs, the first of which was titled Great White Wonder. Bootlegs had existed for many years, mostly among other forms of music, but with Great White Wonder, rock music had its first commercially (albeit illegally) available bootleg ever.
Columbia's release of The Basement Tapes compilation
On June 26, 1975, Columbia officially released a 24-song, double-album titled The Basement Tapes. Compiled and produced by Robbie Robertson, eight of the twenty-four songs did not feature Dylan, and of those eight, only four actually dated from the Big Pink sessions. [citation needed]
All of the tracks were 'remixed' to mono while Robertson and other members of The Band overdubbed new piano, guitar, and/or drum parts over four of the original Dylan-Band recordings. The songs that had additional instrumentation added are as follows: "Clothesline Saga", "Odds & Ends", "This Wheel's On Fire", and The Band only song "Orange Juice Blues". Furthermore, songs like "I Shall Be Released," "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)," "Sign on the Cross," and "I'm Not There (1956)" were omitted, and the rough, first take of "Too Much of Nothing" was used in place of the later, comparatively flawless take copyrighted by Dwarf Music. (Critic Greil Marcus would later hail "I'm Not There (1956)" and "Sign on the Cross" as the best and second best songs, respectively, of the Big Pink sessions.)
Nevertheless, The Basement Tapes was initially hailed by critics, with Robert Christgau giving it a rare A+ in his "Consumer Guide" column. "These are the famous lost demos recorded at Big Pink in 1967 and later bootlegged on The Great White Wonder and elsewhere," wrote Christgau, apparently unaware of some of the changes made by Robertson. "Because the Dylan is all work tape, the music is certifiably unpremeditated, lazy as a river and rarely relentless or precise — laid back without complacency or slickness. The writerly 'serious' songs like 'Tears of Rage' are all the richer for the company of his greatest novelties — if 'Going to Acapulco' is a dirge about having fun, 'Don't Ya Tell Henry' is a ditty about separation from self, and both modes are enriched by the Band's more conventional ('realistic') approach to lyrics. We needn't bow our heads in shame because this is the best album of 1975. It would have been the best album of 1967 too. And it's sure to sound great in 1983." Other critics agreed as The Basement Tapes topped The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll for 1975, beating out Patti Smith's Horses, Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, Dylan's own Blood on the Tracks, and Neil Young's Tonight's the Night, the #2, 3, 4 and 5 ranking albums, respectively.
At the time, some critics lamented omissions like "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" and "I Shall Be Released" from The Basement Tapes, but the double-album only represented a fraction of the Big Pink recordings, and sure enough, a nearly-complete collection of the known recordings was eventually bootlegged as a 5-compact disc set known as The Genuine Basement Tapes. This famous bootleg has since been remastered in 2001, and re-released in the bootleg market under the title "To a Tree With Roots." The body of work found in "The Genuine Basement Tapes" is the centerpiece of Greil Marcus' well-known book of music journalism The Old, Weird America: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes. In this book, the Basement Tapes are compared to Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. The thesis of Marcus' book is that both collections accurately describe an alternate weirder history of the United States.
While Columbia has issued only three more Big Pink recordings since The Basement Tapes ("I Shall Be Released" and "Sante Fe," both issued on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991, as well as take 2 of "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" issued on Biograph in 1985), even more complete collections of Basement Tape material circulate freely among Dylan fans and collectors, like A Tree With Roots, which compacts the The Genuine Basement Tapes to 4 discs and remasters them; most recent commercial bootlegs of the material are actually sourced from noncommercial fan projects such as this.
